Love and Time
by NeoVenus22
Summary: After a meteor shower destroys most of the planet, only two people are left...how will they deal with the destruction that remains?
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Tokyo does not belong to me (last I checked). All characters from BSSM are the intellectual property of one Naoko Takeuchi, and then a bunch of other companies and bigwigs, whom I am not in association with. Hey, that almost sounded official.  
  
***Love and Time***  
  
They say love heals all wounds. The same holds true for time.  
  
Perhaps this was why when the apocalypse struck, only two souls were saved.  
  
Why only two beings, tattered and broken, emerged from the wreckage to see their sisters-in-arms, as well as the rest of the people of Earth, destroyed.  
  
"Minna..?" the younger of the two questioned, dragging herself painfully to her feet. Her right leg was broken, but she limped as quickly as she could on the twisted appendage towards the center of the rubble.  
  
A gasp escaped from her lips, the cute pout perhaps the only thing on her body that hadn't been damaged by the hit. She dropped to her scarred and bleeding knees, and began throwing aside bits of rock. With each rock discarded, a little more of her memory fell into place. A meteor of gigantic, apocalyptic proportions, had come crashing to the Earth, and the nine Sailorsenshi had declared it their duty to stop it. So they had gotten into formation for their intense "Sailor Planet Power" attack, Sailormoon herself at the center of it. But before they could fully charge their power, the meteor had hit, spurred on by an animalistic desire to crush those who lived to protect.  
  
The tremor had been massive. Buildings collapsed, the ground and ocean alike shook from the sheer force of the impact.  
  
Then everything had gone black.  
  
Unbeknownst to the digging senshi and her companion, the two had blacked out for just one day short of a week. In the time following the First Impact, there had been six more meteors. Those seven had finished off what the first could not, and only rubble remained.  
  
Rubble that had killed off everyone. Six days of sweet blackness, a few scratches and bruises, that was the worst of the damage that the women suffered. It was nothing short of a miracle, but it was bittersweet.  
  
The first senshi had now managed to throw away the bulk of the rock formation, and gasped at the sight of a pale are, twisted and bent. "Usagi...Usagi-chan!" she wailed, and tugged tenaciously at the rocks until she uncovered the battered body of her leader.  
  
She began to cry. Tears streamed down her ashen cheeks as she hugged the cold body to her chest. The sailorsenshi of purity and justice was in a state unlike anything she'd ever seen. One of her wings was ripped fright from her body, the other bent at a grotesque angle. The backs of her legs were purple from accumulated blood. Her fuku was haggard, shreds of it barely clinging to her cold skin. One of her trademark odango had come undone, blond hair trailing messily about the target site.  
  
"Minako-chan!" the second senshi yelled. The blond soldier lifted her head, still clutching Sailormoon to her bosom. "Minako..?"  
  
Sailorvenus shook her head. "Setsuna-san...they're gone... they're all gone..."  
  
The dark-haired senshi of time knelt beside her companion, and together they mourned for their sisters-in-arms. When she felt she could cry no more, Aino Minako dug a hole in the rocks and gently lay Sailormoon's body inside. She dusted off her knees, and shook out her hair as her henshin faded. Alongside her stood Meioh Setsuna, looking as grave as Minako herself felt.  
  
"I examined the area..." Setsuna said softly. "There's no one left, Mina-chan. The meteor killed them all. Japan is a wasteland now. We're the only survivors."  
  
Minako gasped, her heart stopping for a few agonizing seconds, blurring together with the rest of the pain in her body. "There must be someone...somewhere..." she tried, but Setsuna was shaking her head even before she had finished.  
  
"There's no one. We're all that's left." 


	2. First Impact

Disclaimer: Tokyo, and any other locations/brand names I may mention within the text do not belong to me (last I checked). Anyone you've never heard of is someone I've made up. All characters from BSSM are the intellectual property of one Naoko Takeuchi, and then a bunch of other companies and bigwigs, whom I am not in association with. Hey, that almost sounded official.  
  
***Love and Time***  
  
***First Impact***  
  
It was twenty eight past six one Saturday evening. Young Minaguchi Noriko was sitting at her desk, drawing in a sketch pad. The ten-year-old happened to be looking across the street at a stretch of park for inspiration when she saw nine sailor-suited figures getting into a circle formation. Hastily the brunette girl grabbed the pair of binoculars she kept in her desk drawer and lifted them to her face.  
  
It was the Sailorsenshi! Bubbling with joy at seeing her idols, she grabbed her Sailormoon figurine off her nightstand and ran down the staircase, binoculars bumping against her chest. She moved quickly, lest she miss a second of the action.  
  
Noriko had just barely crossed the street into the park, a mere few yards from her heroines. In her young mind, she didn't register that the Sailorsenshi only gathered in events for danger, and that her own life might be at risk being so close. She instead clutched her doll tightly in her fist, gazing in rapture at the senshi of justice in the sailor fuku.  
  
Had she gazed a few feet above Sailorvenus's bow or the top of Sailorsaturn's glaive, she would have seen the gigantic meteor as it followed a path to Earth. Had she tuned out the roar of blood and adrenaline in her brain, she would have heard it. Had she been older, she might have realized that the burning heat over her body was not that of excitement; she was not sweating with nervousness.  
  
But she did not look. She did not tune out. Minaguchi Noriko was only ten years old at the time of the First Impact, at six thirty Saturday evening. 


	3. Second Impact

Disclaimer: New York City, JFK airport, Tokyo, and any other locations/brand names I may mention within the text do not belong to me (last I checked). Anyone you've never heard of is someone I've made up. All characters from BSSM are the intellectual property of one Naoko Takeuchi, and then a bunch of other companies and bigwigs, whom I am not in association with. Hey, that almost sounded official.  
  
Rating for language.  
  
***Love and Time***  
  
***Second Impact***  
  
It was three minutes past eleven o'clock in the morning the following Monday. TV journalist Andrew Baker was boarding a last-minute flight to Tokyo, Japan. As he dashed through the terminal of JFK airport in New York City, he noticed that nothing appeared out of the ordinary. People bustled about the airport, as was the norm. Some moved quickly, as he did, albeit they weren't coming fresh off of a broadcast.  
  
They weren't concerned. They didn't have any reason to be. There had been no alarming broadcasts concerning Japan as of late.  
  
Which was precisely why Baker was on the plane.  
  
There hadn't been any broadcasts at all.  
  
The plane was oddly empty, Baker noted, storing his bag in the overhead compartment. An elderly couple in the back row. Another couple in the front, obviously newlyweds. the woman was proudly pulling a t-shirt out of her carry-on and showing it to her husband. Sailormoon, the words read under the picture of a teenage girl.  
  
Two rows behind him was a teenage boy, hair spiked, listening to a portable CD player quite loudly. Baker ignored the annoying pounding sound behind him and instead gazed intently out the window.  
  
Half an hour into the flight, the plane experienced an unexpected jostle. Baker looked up sharply, as a flight attendant bustled by to the cockpit and an announcement came on: "Ladies and gentleman, this is your pilot John Rockefeller...we're experiencing a bit of turbulence here. Please remain seated, thank you."  
  
Baker wasn't alarmed by this. The last three flights he'd been on had suffered a little turbulence, and he was still alive.  
  
The plane shook a second time, and took a severe dive to the left. The two flight attendants on board scrambled out of the cockpit and fastened themselves into a couple of the many empty seats.  
  
Again the intercom came on, and Rockefeller spoke in the calmest, most soothing of tones. "Just relax, folks, we seem to be moving into a storm.' The intercom did not give the tell-tale click after the message, and Baker realized that it was still in fact on.  
  
"Storm? What the hell are you talking about?" one of the pilots demanded.  
  
"Well, what else could it be?" the second said, his hysterical tone a far cry from the gentle words spoken to the passengers just moments ago.  
  
"Take a look around you!" the first pilot barked. "The sky is clear, John!"  
  
There was silence on the plane as the passengers took all of this in. Again the plane dipped.  
  
The intercom crackled a bit, still on, and a message came through: "Holy shit."  
  
"What? Steve?"  
  
"Holy shit," the pilot said again, followed by the sound of someone buckling a seat belt. "Hold on tight, John..." He sounded fearful.  
  
"Steve?" Rockefeller said again.  
  
"We're gonna DIE!" the second pilot wailed, and Baker unbuckled his seat belt. He got up and started running to the right side of the plane, but it dipped again and he went crashing painfully into a pair of empty seats.  
  
"Sir, are you okay? Sir, please sit down. Sir..."  
  
Baker ignored the flight attendant and the throbbing pain in his leg, and scrambled across a few seats, pressing his face up against the window. "Oh, fuck," he muttered.  
  
At last he saw what was troubling the pilots so. The intercom had gone dead with a sizzle after the last broadcast. In fact, the whole plane was heating up. But Baker did not remove his jacket or loosen his tie. Nor did he put on a seatbelt.  
  
Coming towards them, at an amazing speed, was an enormous meteor. One the length of at least four of this 747. It was a massive rock, Baker noted, and must have been absolutely awesome to still be this big after going through the atmosphere. It was going impossibly fast, flames dancing on its wide surface.  
  
Baker sank into a seat, buried his head in his hands, and muttered a prayer. He had a wife and two kids. A beautiful wife he was absolutely in love with and two handsome young boys, the oldest just starting the third grade this year.  
  
Worse yet, he wasn't sure what would happen after the meteor hit the plane. It was so big that they couldn't possibly get out of its way in time. even if they did, they would burn up trying. It was probably just going to hit them and keep moving. Like a bug smacking into the windshield of a car. Except this time, they were the bug.  
  
Then, as the panic subsided, Baker came to the realization that this was his own fault. He just *had* to get on that flight, didn't he. He just *had* to go to Japan, didn't he.  
  
"Huh," he muttered, not bothering to wipe the sweat dripping down his face. "Curiosity did kill the cat, after all."  
  
The plane dipped once more, and the newlyweds' t-shirt came sliding into his foot. Baker reached and picked it up, staring at the blond Sailormoon displayed on the front. In the deepest recesses of his mind, Andre Baker prayed for this blond girl, prayed that she might live where he died and might never know this horror.  
  
He was not alive to witness the second impact, at six minutes past one that afternoon. 


	4. Third Impact

Disclaimer: Paris, Tokyo, and any other locations/brand names I may mention within the text do not belong to me (last I checked). Anyone you've never heard of is someone I've made up. All characters from BSSM are the intellectual property of one Naoko Takeuchi, and then a bunch of other companies and bigwigs, whom I am not in association with. Hey, that almost sounded official.  
  
***Love and Time***  
  
***Third Impact***  
  
On the streets of Paris, a young model who went by Chloe was in her limo on the way to a shoot. Tears ran down her cheeks, smearing black streaks of mascara across her powdered face. Her grandmother had died of a heart attack this morning. Chloe had wanted to stay home with her family, but her career was pressing and if she abandoned the photo shoot, her agent had promised she could kiss her future goodbye.  
  
Chloe stared miserably out the tinted window as her agent prattled on about that day's shoot. He showed her a crude sketch of one of the outfits she'd be wearing. "What's hot right now is the sexy schoolgirl," he announced proudly. "And the hottest schoolgirl around is this blond heroine in Japan. She calls herself Sailormoon, and has a collection of other sexy friends with wacky naval pseudonyms. Jean-Pierre is all about incorporating these sailor outfits for the new season."  
  
Chloe didn't answer; she had nothing to say. Outside, it was a sunny, warm day, but in the limo, it had been nice and cool all morning.  
  
Except now it was getting increasingly warmer. Chloe lifted her hair off the back of her neck and fanned herself. "It's getting hot in here," she said, lowering the divider and smiling at the driver. "Could we turn up the air conditioning, s'il vous plait?"  
  
"It's up as high as it goes, cherie. My apologies."  
  
Chloe put the divider back up, sank into the leather seat, and sighed. "Isn't it hot, though, Francois?"  
  
"Yes! Hot! Good, keep in that mentality. We want a sweaty innocent for the shoot," her agent said enthusiastically. Chloe tuned him out once more. It was definitely getting very warm in the car. She rolled down the window and was hit by a blast of hot air that wasn't just her imagination. Francois looked up. "Mon Dieu, it's hot outside. Chloe, roll that up, would you?"  
  
Chloe clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling a horrified scream. Francois's eyes widened behind his glasses, the reflection of a giant, flaming ball reflected double in the lenses. The limo stopped dead, and screams of terror joined together in a tremulous chorus, invading the car along with the heat. Chloe threw herself on the floor of the limo, her arms over hear head. She heard a prayer, and realized it was she uttering it, repeating over and over and over that she live, that her friends and family live, that the whole thing was a mirage.  
  
The limo was the epicenter of the meteor's landing zone. The sleek black car, and all of its occupants, were destroyed. 


	5. Aftermath

Disclaimer: Tokyo and any other locations/brand names I may mention within the text do not belong to me (last I checked). Anyone you've never heard of is someone I've made up. All characters from BSSM are the intellectual property of one Naoko Takeuchi, and then a bunch of other companies and bigwigs, whom I am not in association with. Hey, that almost sounded official.  
  
***Love and Time***  
  
Aino Minako reached out and touched the giant rock. It was enormous; she couldn't see around it. It seemed to take up all of Tokyo.  
  
The air was ripe with the smell of ashes, of burnt flesh, of decaying cadavers, and thousands of other sickening stenches. Minako had no stomach of steel, and had purged herself three times since awakening. All three instances were explosive and painful, but only the first time did she relieve herself of any material. The second and third instances were only dry heaves, spawned mostly by stress. The sheer weight of the situation was too much on the seventeen-year-old's mind.  
  
The rock was cold by now, enormous and imposing. It was like touching a tombstone. "A mass tombstone for a mass grave," Minako whispered softly.  
  
There was a rustle a few feet away, and she looked up expectantly, hopefully. Could it be someone else had survived the impact? But no, it was only Setsuna. It was horrible to say 'only', like her presence was less than desired, and now she was Minako's only companion. The two senshi, unspoken leaders of two factions of senshi, never spoke much. Sailorpluto occupied the Gates most of the time, and in the rest of her time, raised Hotaru whenever she'd expended energy and had resorted to infant form again. Minako was just trying to graduate high school, and had senshi duties, besides.  
  
"Setsuna-san? What did you find?"  
  
The elder senshi smiled sadly. "Please, just Setsuna. I don't want to waste however long we may have left being formal." Minako nodded. "I managed to scrounge up some food. Canned things. Anything fresh has rotted by now."  
  
"I wonder how long we've been down," Minako said. "I wonder if this was global."  
  
"I have no way of knowing," Setsuna admitted.  
  
"We could go to the Gates and find out," the blond senshi said. "We'd be safer there, anyway. Didn't you survive the fall of the Silver Millennium there?"  
  
"You say that like it's some great achievement," the other senshi said, a shadow passing over her eyes as she reflected on her gloomy past. But the expression passed quickly, and she offered the younger woman a brave smile. "I suppose we don't have much of a choice, do we?"  
  
Minako was gazing at the meteor again, her hand grazing the foreboding, unforgiving rock. "Do you suppose this is our fault? Mass casualty because the meteor was aimed at us?"  
  
"It wasn't aimed at us," Setsuna assured. "We tried to stop it, remember? We stepped into its path." She exhaled softly. "Eat some food. You need your strength to henshin later; you haven't eaten in days."  
  
"How long were we down?" Minako wondered again.  
  
The jade-haired senshi said nothing. "I still have to bury the others," she said, more for her benefit than Minako's. The blonde was staring intently at the rock, oblivious to anything but its evil, mysterious seduction. Setsuna chomped into a candy bar she'd found, discarding the wrapper without a second glance. The Earth was already destroyed, at this point litter didn't matter. Her growling stomach somewhat sate, the chocolate having added an element of warmth to her body, the senshi of time and space set off to find her companions and give them the proper burial they deserved.  
  
The only indication of time were the lights on the horizon, indicating sunset. When Setsuna returned, her hands dirty with her friends' blood, the ground surrounding the high schooler was littered with wrappers and remains of Minako's meal. She was sprawled on the ground, pressed against the meteor. Her ear was positioned on the rock, listening intently, as if it intended to tell her why. "Ready?" Setsuna asked, and Minako looked up, as if surprised to see Setsuna.  
  
"I don't think I ever want to henshin again," Minako said. "I think I just want to lie here and die."  
  
Setsuna was stunned. Minako's temperament had changed totally in only a few hours. But she hadn't left the asteroid's side since finding Usagi's body, and now she was depressed and probably on the verge of hysteria. Throughout the course of their casual friendship, Setsuna had always know Minako to be bubbly, if not flighty, living the life of an average high schooler to the best of her ability. She loved video games and shopping and drooling over idol singers. But when push came to shove, Minako was the one to count on. In dire situations, she always kept a level head. She was strong, both mentally and physically. And no situation was more dire than the apocalypse they had just survived.  
  
Setsuna reached for Minako's limp arm and tugged the girl to her feet. "Minako-chan," she said in her gentlest voice, the one she often reserved for conversations with young Chibi-Usa, "we have to get out of here. It's not safe. The Time Gates are forever untouched by anything, and from there we can assess just how great the damage is. All you have to do is henshin. Once we get there, you can rest. Okay?"  
  
Minako stood numbly, finally daring to lift her head and stare at Setsuna, the familiar sparkly long gone from her blue eyes. "All right."  
  
The senshi of time and space smiled and ruffled Minako's matted blond hair, showering ash on the girl's torn and stained school uniform. "Good girl." Setsuna raised her own henshin stick in the air, prayed she still had enough energy for everything to work, and announced grandly, "Pluto Planet power, make up!"  
  
It worked. She felt the rush of her henshin, the flow of energy from places unknown as it vibrated within her being, coursing through her veins, strengthening her muscles, stamina, and resolve. Her fuku formed over her body, pristine and untouched, as if she were wearing it the first time. Her staff appeared in her hands, the familiar weight acting as a beacon for Setsuna's soul. She felt complete. She felt safe for the first time since this ordeal had begun.  
  
Minako looked up at the elder senshi. She was smiling serenely at Minako, and the high schooler felt much younger than her actual age. Moping about wouldn't bring Usagi and the others back. Lying on the ground wouldn't save Tokyo, and it certainly wouldn't save herself. She and Setsuna were the earth's last best hope. Maybe its only survivors. She took a deep breath to steel her resolve, lifted her henshin wand proudly in the air, and yelled to the skies, "Venus Crystal power, make up!"  
  
She stood amidst the rubble, Sailorvenus, short, blond, powerful and strong. She wasn't weepy, and she wasn't afraid. Never show fear was a senshi motto. And if it wasn't before, it certainly was now. "Take us to the Gates, Pluto," Minako said calmly. 


End file.
